Black Lives Matter
by maigonokaze
Summary: Stef's job puts her and Lena on opposite sides of the protest line.
1. Chapter 1

**A/N:** I am white. I initially considered writing this story entirely from Stef's perspective, since I can more closely identify with her as a white queer person, but Lena is far too important to be sidelined like that. I know that Lena would have a lot to say about anti-black police violence. I want this story to explore both her activism in the Black Lives Matter movement and the way she and Stef handle Stef's job putting them on opposing sides of the protest line.  
I don't want to overstep and I certainly don't want to misrepresent the important work people of color, and especially women of color, are doing to combat police brutality. If at any point I screw up, I will revise as necessary. Or if it's inappropriate for me as a white person to try to write this story, I will take it down.

* * *

"You're not on crowd control today, are you?" Lena asked. Her eyes followed Stef's fingers as they nimbly buttoned her uniform.

Stef shook her head and tucked the bottom of her shirt in. "On patrol. I'm nowhere near the protests," she said.

"Good," said Lena. It wasn't just that she worried for Stef's safety, although that was always a concern. The idea of Stef standing on that line, in support of the cop who had gunned down an unarmed black teenager, turned her stomach.

"You know I'm with you on this, hon," Stef said softly. She clipped her work belt in place around her waist and opened the gun safe on the upper shelf of the closet. "Are you taking the kids with you again today?" Stef asked.

Lena shook her head. School didn't start back for another month, so they had all gone as a family, on Stef's day off earlier in the week. But for the last two nights, the situation had gotten increasingly tense. Nothing had boiled over yet, but it was in the air. Another reason Lena didn't want Stef anywhere near the protests. "Marianna wanted to come, but I don't think that's a good idea."

"No, you're right," Stef agreed. "I worry about…" She stopped. When the protests first started, Stef had tried to stay optimistic. The city officials had learned from watching Ferguson and Baltimore, she'd said. That wouldn't happen here. Now she was less certain. Between what Lena had seen at the protests and the frustrations she heard vented around the station, it was obvious that both sides had dug in. Sooner or later, this would come to a head and when it did, Stef didn't want any of her family to be there. Stef walked over to where Lena sat on the edge of the bed and bent to kiss Lena. "Be careful?" She asked.

Lena kissed her back. "Always," she assured her. She caught Stef's hand as Stef turned toward the door. "I love you."

Stef squeezed back. "Love you too. I'll see you tonight."

* * *

Lena stood on the sidewalk. For almost a week, the protesters had gathered in the street to mourn. A small mountain of flowers, cards, teddy bears, and candles covered the blood that still stained the pavement. But two days ago, the police said they didn't have a permit, so they couldn't be on the street. More than a dozen people had been arrested so far, including Mike Harrison's aunt when she walked into the street to place a family photo on the memorial. Five more were arrested for trespassing when the crush of the crowd pushed them backward, off the sidewalk and onto private property. Now hundreds of people lined the block, packed into narrow, 4-foot-wide strips of sidewalk on either side of the street.

Hot July air pressed in around them. More than a few people had collapsed of heat stroke, packed in the middle of the crush of the crowd. Clothes clung to sweaty bodies and tempers ran high.

Cops with police dogs walked the line, strolling down the street in front of the protesters. Lena didn't know if she knew any of them. She'd met more than a few of San Diego's police through Stef and Mike over the years. She didn't look at their faces; she couldn't stomach their cold, dispassionate expressions in the face of a community's collective outpouring of grief. A cop passed in front of her. They didn't even have a nametag on their uniform. The dog's ears lay flat against its head as it stalked along the edge of the sidewalk.

The cop looked at her and Lena thought she saw a flicker of recognition in their eyes before the mask of indifference fell back into place.

One of the Anchor Beach science teachers, Taunza Wallis, stood just a few feet away from Lena. More than a few of the faculty had turned out for the protests this week, although Lena was the only member of the administration present. As far as she knew - with the size of the crowd, there could very well be others she hadn't run into yet."No justice!" Taunza shouted.

Lena answered in unison with hundreds of other voices: "NO PEACE. NO RACIST POLICE."

The cop's fingers loosened, almost imperceptibly, on the leash. The dog lunged forward. It stopped short two feet away from the line on the sidewalk. A little girl, no older than eight, burst into tears and covered her face, shrinking away from the dog that was almost as big as she was.

"No justice!" Taunza cried again.

"NO PEACE," the crowd roared. "NO RACIST POLICE."

* * *

As 3:00 approached, Taunza tapped Lena on the shoulder and she left her space on the front line. They wove through the crowd, carefully moving toward the Methodist church a few blocks away. About fifty people packed into a small room in the basement. Lena stood along the back wall, while Taunza took a seat in the circle of chairs that filled the center of the room. Lena looked around. Most of these people had been here the last several nights - part of the local organizing committee or, like Lena herself, their friends - but she spotted a few new faces here as well. A number of people had come from out of town, she noticed, judging by the pile of sleeping bags in the corner.

A young man in an Omega Psi Phi shirt passed out "Know Your Rights" cards, giving a handful to each person with instructions to share them throughout the crowd.

A woman in her thirties, in a sharply pressed pantsuit, wrote the number for Johnson, Harris, & Moore on a whiteboard. She said that she and her partners had agreed to defend pro bono anybody arrested tonight.

One of the elderly church members signed that everyone who would be recording should pick up an extra battery pack from the donated pile upstairs. Her grandson interpreted for her as her hands flew in rapid speech, reminding them of the importance of streaming their videos live to a remote server, just in case their phones were confiscated or destroyed.

Lena checked her watch. 4:00. They needed to leave soon if they wanted to hit rush hour.

Finally, Taunza and two other women got up. There'd been some debate over the last few days as to whether they should go to the county courthouse or police headquarters. The final vote had come down for police headquarters, almost a six mile walk from where the police had shot Mike Harrison in Mission Valley. All they had to do now was decide who would risk arrest by being the first to step out into the street and start the march.

When Pastor Karen called the meeting to a close, everyone stood, took their neighbors' hand, and bowed their heads. Lena followed suit, staring down at the worn carpet as the pastor led them in prayer. Tonight was about community, solidarity, and justice. For that she would hold hands and pray to a god she didn't believe in.

The group spilled out of the church and returned to the protest site. They split up, moving to spread out amongst the crowd. Lena found a spot halfway down the block and wedged her way to the front of the sidewalk.

They had decided against having a bullhorn to lead chants. Whoever carried the bullhorn would be singled out by police as a leader. WIthout anything to mark the members of the organizing committee, they could fade into the anonymity of the crowd. Lena glanced at her watch.

"Are you sure about this?" Taunza asked. Lena hadn't volunteered, exactly, but neither had she left the room when they started to put names in the hat.

Lena took a breath. "No," she said. "But they can't arrest all of us, right?"

"It would certainly make for an interesting call to your wife," Taunza said. "Do you want me to take your spot?"

"No," Lena replied. She steeled herself. "This… marching is important. It was a cornerstone of the civil rights movement. This is something I'm proud to do."

When the number on her watch clicked over to 4:30, Lena stepped off the curb into the street. In her peripheral vision, she saw the other volunteers do the same.

Lena walked a few feet out into the road and turned to face the crowd. Her skin crawled as she felt the line of cops watching. She held her breath, half-expecting to be slammed to the ground and cuffed before she could speak. They didn't move. As the organizing committee had predicted, twenty people walking into the street in unison gave the cops pause. That momentary pause was all they needed.

Lena looked one way and then the other, at the women stationed in the street at about 50 foot intervals. WIth one voice, she and the others in the street shouted, "Whose streets?"

There was a moment of silence, before the members of the organizing committee still in the crowd answered, "Our streets!"

The police were moving now. Lena saw them approach the woman to her left. Five or six cops surrounded her, cutting off Lena's view. "Whose streets?" she called again, echoed by the others in the street who were not currently being arrested.

"OUR STREETS!" the crowd replied in force.

"Whose streets?"

"OUR STREETS." They surged forward, stepping down off the sidewalk and into the road.

The police might be able to arrest a few people stepping off the sidewalk one-by-one, but they could not hold back the tide that poured into the street. Lena and the other women who had stepped forward were swallowed by the crowd.

The protesters turned en masse to the south. All it took was a few members of the organizing committee to start walking in the planned direction and the rest followed, moving as one body toward the highway. The crowd hummed with excitement as people realized where they were headed, and the chant changed: "What do we want?"

"JUSTICE!"

"When do we want it?"

"NOW!"

The frontrunners started up the entrance ramp. They ignored screeching brakes and angry honks from the cars as they walked fearlessly out into traffic. "If we don't get it…"

"SHUT IT DOWN."

* * *

Stef and her partner were on patrol in Clairmont Mesa West when the radio crackled, ordering them to return to headquarters. The protesters had spilled past the officers on the scene and brought traffic on the 163 to a grinding halt. The undercover officers planted in the crowd reported that they were marching on SDPD.

When she walked into the precinct, Stef spotted most of her squad circled around Sergeant Wilson. "Where's Captain Roberts?" she asked.

"Flu," Wilson answered shortly.

Stef frowned. She'd seen Roberts this morning. She hadn't seemed sick, and Stef couldn't remember the last time Roberts had taken a sick day.

Wilson turned back to face the wider circle of officers and Stef fell in to listen. "Looks like they're coming down the 163 toward here," he said, tracing down the city map on the wall. "The mayor wants to make sure this doesn't get out of control. We're setting up barricades on E street and Broadway, and have a press corral at Broadway and 13th."

Stef's frown deepened. If the protest was coming to police headquarters, that press area was more than a block away.

Wilson noticed. "Problem, Foster?"

Everyone turned to look at her. Stef shifted her weight. "No, sir," she answered.

"Right," he went back to addressing the group. "We've got officers from every precinct coming in to help with crowd control. Gonna be a shitshow when these thugs show up and we need to be prepared. Northern Precinct is gonna be paired with Northwestern, manning the barricade right in front of headquarters. We want to keep the protest contained on 14th street and in the parking lot. Other precincts will be around to watch the side streets; we're just there to stop them getting close to the building. Alright? Now everybody go suit up and report back in 20."

"Suit up?" Stef questioned. Wilson glared at her. She wished Mike were on days still. If he were here, he could maybe have gotten away with saying the things Stef was thinking. Wilson might be an asshole, but he usually listened when other white men spoke up.

"Riot gear, Foster," he said. "They're bringing the fight to us, we're damn well gonna be ready for it."


	2. Chapter 2

News helicopters flew overhead, capturing the thick train of bodies that filled the road. What had started as about a thousand people soon swelled to three times that number as more and more people left their homes and offices to join in the march

A six mile walk would take most adults about two hours. But with thousands of people of varying speed and ability, the line moved slowly. The sun set while they covered the stretch of the 163 that hung over the San Diego zoo.

Once it became clear the protesters were taking over the freeway, the police had redirected traffic and did not attempt to force them off the road. But as the freeway ended and the 163 turned into 11th Ave, police lined the streets. Siren lights flashed in the twilight sky, blocking them from taking the planned turn down Russ Blvd. Lena slipped through the crowd to find Taunza.

Taunza walked near the front of the crowd. She saw Lena approaching and shook her head, knowing what Lena was thinking before Lena opened her mouth. "We're not going to be able to go through the college," she said. "Too bad. Can always count on college students to join a protest."

Lena looked to the side. Even with the streetlights on, it was growing dark out. "Prof. Greenburg said she would tip off the Black Studies department about tonight. So some of her students might come, even if we don't take the march through campus."

"They just have to get through the barricade," Taunza replied, eyeing the cops that lined the street.

She was right. Now that they were off the freeway, it was clear that the police knew where they were heading… and were funneling them along a designated route. Rather than weaving through the university and nearby neighborhoods, the march headed straight down 11th Ave.

Rows of silent, unmoving police lined the road. Squad cars parked in the streets at every intersection, forcing the protest to continue on a straight path.

At 11th and Broadway, an armored vehicle parked sideways in the road, turning the protest up Broadway, toward police headquarters. The cops in uniform still stood along the edge of the road but more officers in riot gear began to join the line.

Lena's heart thumped in her chest. She raised her chin and set her shoulders. Lena walked tall and confident, feigning indifference to the armed watchers on the sidewalks.

Taunza took Lena's hand. She squeezed tight and Lena returned the gesture. Then she reached for the person on her other side. She didn't know them, had never seen them before today, but she took their hand as well. They looked at her and then reached for the next person beside them. Soon a line stretched across the four-lane road. They raised their arms, each person holding tight to their neighbor.

Those in front of and behind them in the march noticed and linked arms. Row by row, waves of clasped hands rose in the air.

"HANDS UP. DON'T SHOOT," someone in the crowd started chanting, and the rest soon picked up. "HANDS UP. DON'T SHOOT."

Yellow police tape cordoned off a section of pavement in front of the Salvation Army building at Broadway and 13th. News trucks flooded the street with light, and reporters stood with their backs to the road, speaking into the cameras as the protest passed behind them.

One photographer ducked under the tape. He ran out ahead of the protest, jogging backward to photograph the march moving toward him. Halfway down the block, a police sergeant stopped him. Lena couldn't hear what was said, not over the roars of "HANDS UP. DON'T SHOOT" and the steady beat of thousands of marching feet. But she saw the sergeant gesture back toward the press area and, after a moment of what looked like heated debate, the photographer complied.

Police headquarters were in sight now. Armored vehicles parked on E street and in the upper levels of the parking deck along Broadway. Floodlights from atop the trucks lit up the parking lot adjacent to the building.

The officers in everyday uniform had vanished, replaced entirely by rows of cops in riot gear, their faces obscured by riot masks.

Taunza hissed in a deep breath at the sight, and Lena grimaced in agreement. For all that she and Stef had tried to stay optimistic about how the city would handle the protests, Lena knew what crowd control looked like. This wasn't it.

She was just glad that Stef had been out on patrol today; her shift should have ended more than an hour ago. By now Stef would be at home with their kids and - Lena thought with a twinge of guilt - she was probably a nervous wreck that Lena wasn't home yet. She'd promised Stef that if things got dangerous, she would come right home.

They crossed the parking lot, approaching police headquarters. The cops in riot gear stood shoulder to shoulder, forming a solid barrier twenty feet from the building. Lena eyed the heavy batons in their hands and the white, plastic restraints that dangled at their belts, standing out in sharp relief against the black uniforms and body armor. Technically she was keeping her word. Despite the increasingly armed police presence and the discontented rumblings in the growing crowd over the last few nights, they'd had a week of peaceful protests, followed by a harmless, albeit un-permitted, march. Things hadn't gotten dangerous… yet.

* * *

Stef stood shoulder to shoulder with her fellow officers and watched through the clear plastic of her riot mask as the flood of protesters came toward them. On her left, Officer Jeffries shifted uneasily. His grip tightened on the baton in his hands.

"Steady there, Jeffries," she said. The kid was barely a year out of high school and had only been on the force a few months.

"I didn't think there would be so many," he said. He glanced at Stef. "I heard in LA they threw molotov cocktails at the police."

Stef shook her head. "That was the media hyping things up," she said. "There's never been proof of the Black Lives Matter protesters doing anything violent. They're grieving. They're angry. They want to be heard. And they're allowed to be. Remember we're not here to shut down the protest, just to make sure things stay safe, okay? So loosen up on that baton and keep your eyes sharp."

He nodded and uncurled his hand, letting the baton hang loose at his side like Stef's did.

"Jeffries!" Sergeant Wilson barked. The boy turned to look at his CO. "We need more bodies down by Broadway." Wilson pointed. "Go find McCaskill and see where he wants you."

Jeffries nodded and stepped back from the line. Stef slid over half a step to fill in the gap, keeping her eyes fixed on the approaching crowd. Crowd control was almost entirely about spotting problems before they happened. If they had any chance at keeping all hell from breaking loose tonight, it would be by paying attention to the crowd, and responding with minimum engagement.

Wilson leaned in over her shoulder. "I don't care what you talk about at home, Foster, but this isn't the place for it," he hissed. "There's a lot of angry people out here tonight and I'm not going to let any of my boys get hurt because you're distracting them with your bleeding heart." He paused. "Understood?"

Stef cocked her head slightly and forced an amicable expression. There was only one answer she was allowed to give. "Yes, sir," she replied.

"Good." He straightened. "Mayor announced a curfew about thirty minutes ago," he said. "They can protest as much as they want for the next two hours, but at 10:00 everybody is going home."

He walked away and Stef went back to watching the approaching crowd. The sound of their chant echoed in her ears: "HANDS UP. DON'T SHOOT." Over and over again, voices flooded the air with rage and grief and frustration.

Stef swallowed hard. A curfew wasn't going to stop this. She was just glad that she and Lena had talked about the risk of these protests turning dangerous. Stef didn't know how a vigil where Mike Harrison died had turned into a march on police headquarters, but she was sure that Lena would have gone home. By now, Lena would be sitting on the couch with their kids, watching the news and worrying because Stef hadn't come home at the end of her regular shift.


End file.
